GUILLERMO ARANDA-MENA

...with a pinch of salt.  "The Vollard exhibition had been a success; Picasso had sold several paintings, made some money, and established the beginnings of a marked for his work. But he wasn't interested in being a glorified illustrator: he wanted to become Picasso. And for that to happen he had to stop producing his bright pastiches, and change track. He realized it would cause him some short-term financial pain, but hoped it would lead to long-term creative (and commercial) gain. Which is why with the bold optimism of youth, he stopped copying in July 1901 and started to steal instead." WIll Gompertz, Think Like an Artist pg. 88 Guillermo and Iain McKay at the The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (September 2022). Guillermo Aranda-Mena 2022

I am visiting my parents in the same house where I grew up. Browsing through some of my things I found a sketchbook, a present I received in December, 2000. Many of the drawings and sketches I created in it are dated early 2001, year of fond memories and certainly survived all the hype and non-sense of the year Y2K! If looking at the futuristic scenes of Kubrick's 2001: A  Space Odyssey (1968, released before the moon landing) ... one can only look at it as an outdated film esp. as the future is no longer what it used to be!  I simply feel that our lives have certainly taken no a space but a  spatial odyssey! Somehow Kubrik's film still resonates in my mind, in particular "that open ending to interpretation" (way beyond any french's wildest dreams) and in particular that scene of the embryonic "Starchild"  aperance just before the abrupt ending... it might have all been a de-ja vu of my own existence. ... if this is not enough, we are also celebratin...

From abstract thinking to abstract doing. Guillermo Aranda-Mena©2017

ORANGE + GREEN = BLUE NOT .... but all in a continuum. "The life of the mind is a incomparable lyric universe, a complete drama lacking neither adventure, passion, suffering... nor comedy... This world of thought, where one can discern the thought of thought and which extends from the mysterious center of consciousness, to the luminous expanse where the madness of clarity is awakened, is as varied, as moving, as surprising... as admirable in itself as the world of affective experience only by instinct." - Paul Valéry, 1937 "The lower leaves of the trees,  tangle the sunset in dusk. Awe spreads with the summer twilight" Japanese Haiku. 10th C. Japan